Hair

Why? That’s what I want to know. Why? I could see them doing it if they were in the cellar and ten games below .500 and they wanted to change their whole sense of reality. You might also want to do something like this when you don’t have enough of a team dynamic. The Mets are 21-12. They have a great team dynamic. There was no reason for them to do this.

Now there is all this pressure on Jose Reyes to get rid of the hair that is such a part of his personality and style. I love to see his hair move as he runs and flies and dives. It’s like the trail of a comet. He doesn’t look like anyone else with those curls. That is who the great superstar Jose Reyes is. Why, please, would anyone in their right mind want Jose Reyes to start using a different kind of toothpaste at this moment, why would they want him to start drinking a different beer, why would they want him to change any routine in any way at all? When someone is playing like Jose is at this point you keep everything the same, exactly the same, hoping to fool fortune into thinking that something impossible and perfect can continue forever.

And Shawn Green? With his hair he is one of the best-looking guys in baseball. Without it he looks like John Malkovich playing the vampire Nosferatu. And did it not occur to anyone that Green is in such a beautiful groove right now that, as with Reyes, it would be madness to change anything at all? Have you noticed that before the haircut, Green was fifth in the NL in batting and he has now gone 0 for 7. Didn’t anybody on that team know the story of another Jewish hero who lost all of his strength when his hair was cut?

There were two guys who did need some shaking up, some change. Delgado and Wright. But Delgado already has no hair and on Wright the whole thing would have been funny and cute.

So, who was the instigator, here? Beltran? When did Beltran become an instigator? The rap on Beltran is that he’s a great ballplayer who is a shy and quiet clubhouse presence. He has to choose this moment and this way to stop being shy and quiet?